


Three Deaths (or a tale of grief)

by Leoporidae_Lagomorpha



Category: One Piece
Genre: Depression, Gen, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Introspection, Law POV, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 13:17:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3448580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leoporidae_Lagomorpha/pseuds/Leoporidae_Lagomorpha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trafalgar Law contemplates the life he’s led up until the events of Dressrosa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Deaths (or a tale of grief)

**Tragedy**

noun (of the Latin _tragœdia_ )

 **1 -** an event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress, such as a serious accident, crime or natural catastrophe.

**2 -** a play dealing with tragic events and having an unhappy ending, especially one concerning the downfall of the main character.

• the dramatic genre represented by tragedy: Greek tragedy. Compare with **comedy**.

* * *

 

 

_Why does tragedy exist?_

He finds a certain kinship in Monet, finds a part of himself in pale arms turned smooth wings. He watches her, back bent over endless stacks of data, pen scribbling away, soft spoken and charming. As pleasant as a rattle snake. She’s a fake. A bird that shouldn’t fly, an anomaly of nature that God never graced. He sees a reflection of himself staring back from behind thick lenses.

She’s made of lies and so is he.

The way the surgeon held her heart in his hand and felt it beat against his fingertips is all too hauntingly familiar with the way Vergo crushed his own beating organ in his ferocious grip. A hulking figure of a man, his body black and gleaming from his armament haki, still so stupidly devoted to his master, still looking down on Law like a fool. His body wracked with crippling pain, the iron taste of blood and Joker’s distorted voice mocking him, Trafagar Law is burning fury. His fear from long ago tempered into unwavering hatred. He is a puppet pulled by the strings of vengeance. Vergo doesn’t stand a chance, neither does Ceasar’s laboratory, sliced in half, destroyed by his hands. Law makes his way out of Punk Hazard still smouldering in anger’s flames.

_Because you are full of rage._

Trafalgar Law is as unforgiving as a snowstorm and bitingly cold like ice. He is frigid like a frozen corpse on a winter day, lifeless, removed of all warmth like the body of the traitor he cried for the day he died for a second time. The poison that was fated to take him from the very first moment he breathed in life, the one that cursed him, the one that branded him a monster in white, the one that destroyed a city and sentenced him to death by fire.

_Why are you full of rage?_

Law lost everything when he first died, when he tossed away his identity and assumed the one of grief fuelled insanity. When he took on the madness of destruction, spurned by humanity and itching to make the world see just how much he’d suffered. He was still a child mourning the loss of his own innocence, hurt and intent on hurting anyone to make up for his misery. He was foolish, but broken. So twisted inside he’d regressed to the mind of a wounded beast lashing out at everything that threatened him.

It took an angel to understand him.

A burning angel with black wings, that towered over him smoking quietly. An angel with a name that spoke of love and who’s blood brother was the devil himself. A painted face crying silent tears over cursed child’s pain. An enigma. Back then, Law’s eyes had seen him as a saviour, but he’d only ever been a man.

A man made of lies, who’s words and promises were uttered and never kept. He was careless, awkward in his kindness, tripping through life like a parody of competency. He was a traitor, a betrayer, a bleeding heart and in the end he payed for it. He was played for the fool that he was and the world failed him. He wound up dead in the snow, murdered by the brother he’d been trying to save from a descent into his own selfishly driven insanity, he died shielding another poor soul from Doflamingo’s reach. Law’s heart broke that day and so did the man of the same name.

_Because you are full of grief._

Law is approaching his end, his third and last death, the final act of his lifelong tragedy and he is cold steel cutting down his enemies. He is pain stewed over years into the putrid black rage of revenge. Trafalgar Law was a boy born a monster who only truly became one at humanity’s hands. He is mourning, anger and bitter regret. He is sleepless nights, tired eyes and an exhausted reflection in mirrors he always avoids. The phantom scars of the white marks that once afflicted him, still visible in the glass of the bathroom mirror. Law is self loathing, he is hollow with pain and a shallow facade of confidence. He is the inheritor of the cruelty that was inflicted upon him.

Trafalgar Law walks into Dressrosa wearing a tribute in ink on his skin and Corazon emblazoned on his back. He takes his first steps shadowed by his own memories, shrouded in his own selfish desire, his thirst for some kind of compensation for the loss he’s endured. He doesn’t call it justice, it isn’t noble, it is not done out of any kindness. Law isn’t here in Doflamingo’s domain for his crew, he isn’t here to help further Strawhat’s goals, he’s not here for his dreams, no Trafalgar Law is in this country to put his nightmares to rest. This will be his revenge, his means to an end, the suicide attempt ten years in the making. Dressrosa will be his closing curtain, his and Doflamingo’s inevitable downfall. Law will topple a king to achieve what he knows will be his final rebuttal against the demon that has haunted him for much too long. Law is tired, he’s worn down, strung out, living off the loathing he finds at the bottom of his coffee cup, but making his way through Dressrosa’s crowded streets he is death knocking on fate’s door. He wears his government given epithet of Death’s Surgeon like a shroud to conceal his insecurities, covers the cracks in his facade with calculated cruelty. Law is a man walking to an execution and he does so with the knowledge that it will also be his own.

Trafalgar faces down his tragedy head on, if this is to be his end then he shall bring all his despair with him to the grave. On his path down into Hell, Law will carry his regrets in one hand and Doflamingo’s head in the other. He has nothing left to give and nothing but his life left to take away.

_Tragedy exist because of reality._

**Author's Note:**

> A bunch of shitty stuff happened to me and I haven't been up to writing lately. This is the first thing I managed to write since then and I hope it'll serve to help me get back into the swing of things. 
> 
> Feel free to comment/review!


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